Old television sets destined for a repeat run

Picture: CRAIG ABRAHAMDiscarded television sets on the streets of Kew yesterday await removal to a recycling depot, where their parts will be separated and recycled.

There's a revolution going on in the television world - and no, it does not involve renovations or a Tasmanian called Reggie.

This trend will mean changes in the way televisions are made. The bad news is that consumers will be paying more for their sets.

This month, manufacturers including Sony, Sharp and Panasonic will try to agree on a national system of television recycling, after a successful trial in Melbourne's east.

The proposed system, to start within 18 months, will collect old sets and send them to depots where their parts will be separated and recycled. Old televisions may be picked up when new ones are delivered, or service centres and possibly retailers might accept sets to send to waste depots.

The move is part of a worldwide trend - pushed by more stringent European environment laws - in which manufacturers take responsibility for their products from "cradle to grave".

Televisions, and other "e-waste" such as video players and computers, will be designed with materials that are more easily recycled and with less toxic chemicals. The 12-month pilot, which diverted 3500 televisions, computer monitors and VCRs from landfill, found the net cost of collecting and taking apart televisions for recycling was between $11 and $30, depending on the size of each set. The industry believes the consumer will carry this cost, probably in the price of a new set.

The spokesman for the Australian Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers Association, James Galloway, said: "It may be a visible cost so when consumers buy a product its environmental impact is built into the price."

Televisions and computers are normally dumped in landfill, where they leach a chemical cocktail of lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium and flame retardants.

The television waste problem is likely to become worse as Australians upgrade to bigger and better "home theatre" systems.

In 1992 only 10 per cent of televisions were more than 68 centimetres wide; now almost half of units are that big.

Except for Panasonic, which makes televisions in Penrith, NSW, Australia is an importer - which makes for a recycling challenge. You cannot just send the sets back to the local factory.

Under the Melbourne trial, MRI, an electrical and electronics recycler in Campbellfield, set up a production line that separated television parts.

The sets were, on average, 15 years old, and the older the television, the more environmentally toxic. There are markets for most bits of television innards. The copper is sold, the polymers are reused in pipes, and the steel, nickle and glass are recycled.

The most dangerous part is the rear glass of the cathode ray tube, which contains 24 per cent lead by weight. This lead, and silicon, is sent as a fluxing agent to a smelter at Port Pirie.